Autism and Mercury

February 24, 2001|30,899views

This article is excerpted from Dr. O'Shea's
revised edition of The Sanctity of Human Blood.

Inquiry into vaccine safety is exploding like never
before, even in the popular press. Research coming from dozens of mainstream
medical studies can no longer be easily suppressed, as it has been in
the past, especially with the prevalence of online information exchange.

Last September, some 2,000 people, mostly MDs, assembled
at the Town and Country resort in San Diego to hear the latest research
on autism. Following the April 2000 Congressional hearings on autism and
vaccines, this epidemic can no longer be ignored.

The figure of one autistic
infant for every 150 is now widely documented.

By age two, American children
have received 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone, which
far exceeds current EPA "safe" levels of .1 mcg/kg. per day.
That's one-tenth of a microgram, not one microgram.

Three days in particular may be singled out as spectacularly
toxic for infants:

Day of birth: hepatitis B-12 mcg mercury

30 x safe level

At 4 months: DTaP and HiB on same day
- 50 mcg mercury

60 x safe level

At 6 months: Hep B, Polio - 62.5 mcg mercury

78 x safe level

At 15 months the child receives another
50 mcg

41 x safe level

These figures are calculated for an infant's average
weight in kilograms for each age.

These one-day blasts of mercury are called "bolus
doses". Although they far exceed "safe" levels, there has
never been any research conducted on the toxicity of such bolus doses
of mercury given to infants all these years.

Inconceivable

Historically, the toxicity of mercury has been known
for more than a century. The Mad Hatter was more than a fantasy character
from Alice in Wonderland. Mad Hatter's disease became well known in England
in the mid-1800s, when hat-makers were subject to inhaling the vapors
from the mercury-based stiffening compound they used on felt to make top
hats.

Sources of Mercury

It is interesting to learn that common household remedies
that were used up into the 1960s like mercurochrome and "teething
powder" were often the cause of acute mercury poisoning and disease.

In the U.S., EPA mercury toxicity studies have involved
contamination from fish, air, and other environmental sources.

Methylmercury has long been associated with serious
neurological disorders, demyelinating diseases, gut disease, and visual
damage.

The mercury in vaccines,
however, is in the form of thimerosal, which is 50
times more toxic than plain old mercury.

Reasons for this include:

Injected mercury is
far more toxic than ingested mercury.

There's no blood-brain
barrier in infants.

Mercury accumulates
in brain cells and nerves.

Infants don't
produce bile, which is necessary to excrete mercury.

Thimerosal becomes
organic mercury

Once it is in nerve tissue, it is converted irreversibly
to its inorganic form. Thimerosal is a much more toxic form of mercury
than one would get from eating open-sea fish; it has to do with the difficulty
of clearing thimerosal from the blood.

Thimerosal is converted
to ethylmercury, an organic form that has a preference for nerve cells.

Without a complete blood-brain barrier, an infant's
brain and spinal cord are sitting ducks. Once in the nerve cells, mercury
is changed back to the inorganic form and becomes tightly bound. Mercury
can then remain for years, like a time-release capsule, causing permanent
degeneration and death of brain cells.

Bernard also notes that the body normally clears mercury
by fixing it to bile, but before six months of age, infants don't produce
bile. Result: mercury can't be excreted.

Four separate government agencies have set safe levels
for methylmercury, but no safe levels have ever been set for thimerosal,
because thimerosal isn't included in toxicity studies.

Theoretically, that means that the above
excesses of safe levels of mercury on the single days listed above are
actually 50 times higher.

Does the fact that the mercury is accompanied by a
vaccine somehow place it above scrutiny? The Sallie Bernard study of vaccines
and mercury toxicity was probably the main reason Congress began to see
the obvious correlation.

Mercury And Vaccines

Here's a curious "coincidence." In the late
1930s, Leo Kanner identified autism as a new type of mental disorder.
So when was thimerosal introduced into vaccines?

The 1930s

A few years ago, Bernard and her associates began
to notice a striking similarity between the symptoms of autism and the
symptoms of mercury poisoning. The more research she did, the more it
seemed that these two diseases were virtually identical.

Although mercury toxicity has been studied for decades,
and EPA safety levels have been set, during all that time a child's greatest
exposure to mercury - thimerosal in vaccines - was never even included
in the toxicity studies!

The talk has always been about methylmercury from
seafood and the environment, totally ignoring the two most toxic sources
of mercury for children: vaccines and dental amalgams.

The EPA has no jurisdiction
over drugs.

That's the FDA's job. This is why vaccines and amalgams
don't even figure into the equation when it comes to setting "safe"
levels of mercury.

But the FDA does have jurisdiction over drugs and
drug companies, right? And over drug company publications, like the Merck
Manual, the standard cookbook for drugs and diseases found in every doctor's
office in the world.

Surely the FDA, as the government agency charged with
safeguarding the nation's health, would want the section on mercury toxicity
to warn doctors about the two biggest sources for children: thimerosal
and dental amalgams, wouldn't you think?

Yet looking at the Merck Manual (1999), in the section
on mercury poisoning (p. 2636), thimerosal and dental amalgams again are
not even mentioned!

How can this be, when
mercury is widely acknowledged as the third most deadly toxin in the world
and thimerosal and amalgams dwarf the trace amounts of mercury from fish
and other environmental sources of mercury?

Only one thing can a blackout information over an
entire area of study for years at a time in this way - big
money.

Such an omission probably wouldn't have anything to
do with the revolving door that exists between the FDA; the EPA; the NIH;

"and the sweet positions held by their members
before and after those grueling years of public service; or with the 800
waivers of the conflict of interest rule that the FDA has granted in the
past two years to "experts," who are paid consultants to the
drug companies-consultants who are also members of the FDA advisory committees
that make decisions about whether or not to approve vaccines and drugs..."
(USA Today, Sept. 25, 2000)

No, of course not.

Soaking up the Mercury

In the San Diego conference on autism, Dr. Amy Holmes
gave perhaps the only lucid presentation about treatment. She explained
how chelating drugs alone, which go through the blood like Pac Man munching
up mercury, don't do much good for autism.

That's because most mercury clears from the blood
very soon. Mercury in thimerosal is stored in the gut, liver and brain,
and as previously mentioned, becomes very tightly bound to the cells.
Once inside those cells, or inside the blood-brain barrier, the mercury
is reconverted back to its inorganic form.

Locked into these cells, the mercury can then do either
immediate cell damage or become latent and cause the onset of autism,
brain disorders, or digestive chaos years later.

Dr. Holmes reported success using alphalipoic acid
as an agent to cross the blood-brain barrier to soak up mercury. Once
the mercury is brought back into the bloodstream, standard chelators like
DMSA can then take it out.

Dr. Holmes has used her protocol on about 300 autistics
so far, and shows consistent increases in IQ scores.

FDA: Protector of Whom?

In the face of all this new awareness, it was astounding
that in July 2000 the FDA came out with the "parallel-universe"
pronouncement that "vaccines have safe levels of mercury."

Especially after their 1998 position:

"... over-the-counter drug products containing
thimerosal and other mercury forms are not generally recognized as safe
and effective."

As if there were any doubt as to who's really running
the show, inconceivable also is the impotence of FDA's request to the
vaccine manufacturers to discontinue the use of thimerosal in vaccines
(LINK TO ARTICLE ON SITE) The same month that MMWR published this, the
CDC made the same milquetoast request.

It's a bit like saying: "Hey guys, since all
these kids are turning into vegetables and most of our researchers know
it's the mercury, would you mind not putting any more thimerosal in your
vaccines, please?
No hurry, though. Whenever you're ready. No need to dump all those batches
of vaccine just because people are finding out it's the mercury that's
destroying children's brain cells."

The members of the FDA who decide which vaccines get
approved make up the advisory board. In his recent House investigation
on vaccines, Rep. Dan Burton found out that financial statements of advisory
board members are "incomplete."

Noting that this is the only branch of government
that allows incomplete financials, in September 2000, Burton called the
advisory board's sweetheart arrangements with the vaccine manufacturers
a "violation of the public trust."

This includes 70 percent
of advisory board members owning stock in vaccines, owning patents on
vaccines, and accepting salaries and benefits as employees of the drug
companies.

A Matter of Trust

Still think you can trust the government or your physician
with your children's blood? Despite the facts and events cited above,
consider this joint statement of the U.S. Public Health Services and the
American Academy of Pediatrics:

"There is a significant safety margin incorporated
into all the acceptable mercury exposure limits. There are no data or
evidence of any harm caused by the level of exposure that some children
may have encountered in following the existing immunization schedule ...
Infants and children who have received thimerosal-containing vaccines
do not need to be tested for mercury exposure" (TRY TO REPLACE THIS
WITH LINK FROM SITE MMWR, vol. 45, 1999).

These are blatant Orwellian distortions. No harm?

What about the autism
epidemic and all the evidence linking it with mercury cited above?

What about the
single day doses of mercury cited above that are dozens of times in
excess of the EPA's own safety levels?

If everything
is so safe, then why did they ask the vaccine pushers to kindly discontinue
thimerosal from vaccines as soon as possible at the end of this same
statement?

It is beyond the scope of this paper to really go
into the politics of mercury. In researching mercury toxicity, a whole
area of "dry rot" has been unearthed that deserves its own story.
This is the shocking story of how the American Dental Association and
the California Dental Association have been systematically hiding the
truth about mercury toxicity in fillings for decades.

In a ludicrous blast of irony, both the ADA and the
CDA have inserted into their "code of ethics" strict commandments
forbidding dentists from ever revealing to patients the realities of mercury
toxicity.

No dentist is allowed to recommend removal of mercury
amalgams for health reasons, nor may tell the patient about mercury toxicity
even if the patient asks. This gag order has been in place for since the
beginning of American dentistry. Exaggeration? Check their websites out:

www.amalgam.org/#anchor69176 www.amalgam.org/#anchor69541

Do you think dentists put mercury into their own families'
teeth? Ask them. Anyone who is not a dentist is not constrained by the
gag order, imposed on American dentists by the ADA, against telling patients
what many perceptive researchers in the field of mercury toxicity already
know: that no children should ever get mercury amalgam fillings.

Laughingstock of the West

Researchers across Europe are generally appalled at
the massive amounts of vaccines given to American children under two years
old. Although Europeans are not as obsessed with vaccines as we are, they
do vaccinate.

But most of Europe gives
very few vaccinations to children under two years old, primarily because
of the unformed gut, immune system, and blood-brain barrier.

This intellectual isolation of ours regarding vaccines
is a testimony to the suffocating "brain control" exerted on
us by the popular press and all media. Like sheep to the slaughter, we
don't know enough to be appalled by our own ignorance.

Autistic Gut

Headlining the September 2000 San Diego Conference
was Andrew Wakefield, the British surgeon whose shocking new discoveries
show that mercury toxicity alone is not the only factor linking vaccines
with the autism epidemic. Dr. Wakefield's research centers around the
MMR vaccine - measles/mumps/rubella - which does not contain thimerosal.

Expanding on his presentation at the April 2000 Burton
hearings, Dr. Wakefield explained how at least three-quarters of autistics
have pathologically blocked bowels, due to the huge swelling of the tissue
lining the intestine.

In virtually every autistic patient they examined,
this nodular hyperplasia is both an immune response and an autoimmune
response that Wakefield and O'Leary have clearly linked to the presence
of measles virus from the MMR shot. No other virus was found in those
cells.

It is a new bowel pathology.

Wakefield showed graphs of the U.S. and U.K. 10 years
apart that were identical in tracing the skyrocketing incidence of autism
just after the MMR vaccine was introduced.

He also showed how
the incidence of measles had dropped over 85 percent
on its own before the MMR was introduced.

One incredible study cited by Wakefield showed how
76 percent of children whose mothers were exposed to atypical measles
became autistic after the MMR shot! He called this a "background
susceptibility" or predisposition to autism.

Wakefield reminds us that
in neither country have there ever been comparative studies on giving
multiple vaccines (polyvalent) on the same day.

This custom of ours, with both the DPT and the MMR,
is not scientific by any stretch, and is primarily for the convenience
of those administering the shots, and those being paid per vaccine. As
a result, there is a good chance of geometric ill effects.

Then Wakefield cited the original MMR study (Buynak,
Journal of the American Medical Association 1969, vol. 207).

Not only was the safety
of multiple vaccines never mentioned, there was no follow-up to the study
to see if their conclusions were correct.

In the usual manner of testing vaccines on the live
population, MMR was simply tacked onto the mandatory schedule, and we've
never looked back.

Despite studies in 1981 on Air Force personnel showing
major synergistic adverse effects in the gut from the combination of measles
and rubella vaccines, the mandatory schedule went unchanged.

A Glimmer of Hope

Despite these formidable obstacles, doubts are creeping
into the overall public "consciousness" about the safety of
vaccines. At one in 150, the fact of autism as an epidemic can no longer
be covered up.

The work of Wakefield, O'Leary, Megson and Bernard
is getting more and more difficult to explain away. Rep. Dan Burton seems
relentless in his efforts to acquaint Congress with the meretricious relationship
between the FDA Advisory Committee and the vaccine manufacturers.

The massive advertising campaign about the safety
of vaccines in the popular media, which is certain to be stepped up in
the next few months, is going to look very hollow in the light of clean,
unbiased research that is not funded by parties who stand to make billions
from certain predetermined results.

And the internet makes this well-referenced, scientific
work accessible to the public without the usual monodimensional smokescreen
from the popular press.

Ultimately, the value of the San Diego
"Conference on Autism" was its signal that autism
will not be allowed to slip from the public awareness, like
so many other feature stories that come and go. The simple
truth has been unveiled, and anyone who looks can see it clearly:
our prime question should not be asking how we can cure autism
once it occurs. The evidence is now overwhelming that in most
cases, this new epidemic that we call autism is a preventable
disease.

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Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Congratulations to Dr. O'Shea
for an excellent review of this important topic.

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